Her parents die when she is eleven years old.
There is a car crash, a horrible, terrible one where the car flips and the gas leaks from the gas tank and it all ignites and her parents are dead dead dead. She lives, briefly, in an orphanage, state run, but she hates the feeling of comforting hands on her shoulders and kind voices tickling her ears, so she slips away while she and one of the supervisors are at the supermarket and goes to the mall.
She doesn't leave for five months.
She had taken classes at Beverly Hills Prep before her parents died, and damn she was good at gymnastics. She preferred the vault and the uneven bars over floor exercises and balance beam routines, but she was good enough at all of it that they (her coaches, her parents) talked of her going to the Olympics, winning medals, making her country proud.
That's not really an option anymore, but she's certainly agile enough that she can evade mall security.
She learns how to steal. She nabs a pair of rollerblades from a sporting goods store and makes friend with the boys and occasional girl who skate in the skate park just outside the mall entrance. Sometimes they sneak into the mall and ride the rails from the second floor to the first, or create havoc around the fountains by daring each other to jump over jets of water ("If you get wet, you have to eat the a piece of gum from underneath the handrails!"). Jubilee uses the distraction to slip into peoples' pockets or purses and inch their wallets out. Sometimes she gets caught, but her friends help distract security while she zooms away.
She's been in the mall for three months when she sees someone from her old school. She isn't in Beverly Hills anymore, but a small town several miles away, so it's a shock to see Amelia. They're in the food court, and Jubilee has just swiped a wallet from the table of a harried-looking man with his ear pressed tightly to a cell-phone. Amelia stares at her, open-mouthed, and Jubilee flushes and throws the wallet back down, backing away quickly and then sprinting off. She makes it to the women's room and locks herself in a stall. Her hands shake.
Four and a half months in she is cornered without her friends to protect her. She is crouched behind a trash can in her rollerblades, helpless as the cops close in.
"Look, kid, you've been causing trouble around here for too long. You're surrounded and you've got a one-way ticket to juvie whether you cooperate or not. Come out nicely and ,maybe they'll go easy on you." The footsteps of the cop get louder as he approaches her hiding place. She can feel the panic rising in her chest. She can't go to juvie she can't she CAN'T oh god and she can't even do anything what is she going to DO-
Her hands explode.
Fireworks burst from her fingertips, painfully bright, all different colors. She can hear shout of pain and for a second she glimpses the man's are bright, bloody red and covered with angry, streaked, burns. The skin is bubbled and raw, smoking and near black in some cases. Bile rises in her throat and she dashes away on her skates. Jubilee has ripped off her rollerblades and sprinted several blocks to the beach before she can think. She shoves past people, innocent people who are just trying to enjoy themselves on one of the nicest days of the year, and kneels at the water's edge. She is shaking violently, tears streaming down her face as she sobs and gasps. She submerges her hands in the ocean, horrified. The water around her hands is scalding, bubbling and boiling with heat.
Jubilee kneels there for several hours, until she can remove her hands from the sea without violent, colorful sparks rolling off her fingertips. Then she walks to the police station and turns herself in.
She is charged with petty theft and assaulting a police officer. They think she set off fireworks in the mall. They don't know that the fireworks came from her hands. She spends a year and a half in a juvenile detention center. It isn't like in movies, with drama and scandal and conspiracies. There are girls that she avoids and girls that she sits near and girls that she talks to but she doesn't make friends. She takes classes, regular school ones and ones that are supposed to teach her to be a functioning member of society. She goes to the required therapy sessions and doesn't get in fights and doesn't tell anyone about her thing.
She is released into a halfway home, and then into the foster care system. She behaves herself. She doesn't get in fights or steal like the other kids. She listens and obeys her supervisors and teachers and works very, very hard on her homework, because those months of living in the mall were enough to keep her back a grade, and she hates it. The people at her state home try to place her with families a few separate times, but no one wants a kid with a record.
She doesn't have any friends, either at her new high school or at the state home. She doesn't talk much. She doesn't have any hobbies. (She liked rollerblading and gymnastics and shopping, but then her hands exploded and she isn't sure if she's allowed to like those things anymore.)
The adults like her. She is quiet and polite. She does what she is told without fuss. She is a mediocre student, but the effort is there. She doesn't ask for money or for rides, and if she doesn't spend much time with the other kids, she doesn't seem any worse off for it.
Before her thing, she was a social butterfly, popular and talkative and just the right amount of sassy. Now things like clothes and friends don't seem to matter. Everything is dampened by the constant itch in her palms, the restless energy in her fingers, the need to contain.
Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Mrs. Meyers, her social worker, tells her that a homosexual couple is looking to foster, and that she may end up being placed with them. Jubilee nods wordlessly, but Mrs. Meyers still hesitates. She wants Jubilee to meet them first, she explains, because "they are… well, you see, dear…certain, special circumstance have arisen, and…It's Bruce Banner and Clint Barton."
Jubilee is fazed by very little. She nods curtly at Mrs. Meyers and goes back to struggling over algebra.
Two days later, she is sitting next to Mrs. Meyers in a nice restaurant downtown, across from said superheroes. The dark-haired one, Bruce Banner, looks distinctly nervous. He is clutching his boyfriend's hand under the table. Clint, however, looks collected. Mrs. Meyer does most of the talking. She tells the couple all about Jubilee's nonexistent hobbies. She's trying to be helpful, trying to make Jubilee seem like a normal, happy outgoing teenager, because bless her heart, Mrs. Meyers really does want Jubilee to get placed. But they haven't even gotten to the main course yet and already Mrs. Meyer has made up three separate pastimes and brought up gymnastics, but hasn't said anything about Jubilee's police record or the fact that she's failing math or how she doesn't have any friends.
Normally Jubilee wouldn't care, but these men seem nice enough and they're superheroes, so probably they can tell that Mrs. Meyers is lying, and the burning itch in her hands is driving her crazy, so she interrupts.
"I have a police record."
Mrs. Meyers freezes. Now all three of them are staring at her. Bruce looks confused, Mrs. Meyers livid, but Clint is smiling slightly at her.
Mrs. Meyers' teach are clenched tight as she whispers, "What was that, dear?"'
Jubilee shrugs. "I have a police record. I thought you should know, because, y'know, I might be living with you."
Mrs. Meyers laughs awkwardly and pats her on the hand, then continues speaking. The entrees come, and Jubilee privately thinks that her chicken is perhaps the most delicious thing she's ever tasted. Mrs. Meyers' cell phone rings, and she stands, apologizing even as she shoots Jubilee a don't screw this up look over Bruce and Clint's heads.
As soon as she is gone, they both lean forward. Clint is grinning at her, but Bruce is completely serious.
"I assume you know about…me? About the Hulk?"
Jubilee nods. Everyone knows about the Hulk. Bruce closes his eyes briefly but continues.
"You should know this before you consider coming home with us. The Hulk is dangerous. He's under control ninety-nine percent of the time, but if you have any doubts, if you think you're going to be afraid at any time, tell us. We don't want you to stay with us and be afraid. We'd like you to come live with us, yes, but we want what's best for you."
Jubilee considers this. Is she afraid? She doesn't think so, and tells them that. Bruce laughs with relief and Clint's smile widens into a grin. They tell her about their home, the Avengers mansion, and about all the people that live there with them. She knows the Avengers, of course, but there are other names she doesn't recognize. Pepper is Pepper Potts, she assumes, but she doesn't know Darcy or Erik, or Jane or Peter. Peter is a bit older than her, they say, the adopted son of Tony and Steve Stark-Rogers. Mrs. Meyers returns before they can continue, and she takes over the conversation once again. Jubilee pretends she doesn't notice the small, happy smiles Clint and Bruce shoot at her for the reminder of dinner. She tells herself that she wants to go with these men to make them happy, to help them, so she can somehow make up for the horrible day that her hands exploded. She ignores the niggling, guilty voice in the back of her head that says she wants this as much as they do.
A week passes, and then she is on a plane to New York with her duffle bag of clothes. Mrs. Meyers gives her some money to buy them both lunch in the terminal, but instead she buys a pair of bright yellow sunglasses. Mrs. Meyer is not pleased. She confiscates the glasses and goes to buy lunch herself.
The flight lands and they are driven to the mansion by a man named Happy. They go through security and someone brings them upstairs to what is apparently the Banner-Barton floor of the mansion. Bruce and Clint are waiting expectantly, and they greet her fondly but without any touching, for which Jubilee is grateful. Bruce takes her bag and shows them around their floor, before leading them to her room. It is substantially bigger than the one she had at the state home, and just as impersonal.
"We didn't want to decorate it with something you wouldn't like," Clint explains, and Jubilee feels a rush of gratitude. She smiles shyly in response.
When the tour of their floor is finished, they continue throughout the rest of the mansion.
Clint narrates as the elevator advances. "This is Natasha and Pepper's floor. This one is for Tony and Steve and Peter. This floor has two suites, one for Darcy and one for Erik. Thor and Jane. This one is a guest floor, Tony insisted. These two are Tony's labs. This one is Bruce's, but we'll show you that later, it's kind of boring-" he grins as Bruce makes an indignant sound-"Gym and swimming pool, shooting range, training center, other training center, library, offices, theater, two more labs, kitchen, one of the like, twelve common rooms, dining rooms, kitchen again, kitchen again, I'm not even really sure what these floors are, ok, good, we're here."
They exit the elevator into a large living room thing that apparently contains everyone who is currently living in the house. Jubilee knows some of them on sight, of course. Steve Rogers is reading in an armchair. Natasha Romanoff is talking with Pepper Potts, tapping away on a tablet. Tony and a dark-haired woman (Darcy?) are arguing loudly about something involving air-traffic control and hypnotism. A blond woman is giggling as Thor and a boy about Jubilee's age (Peter, then) play a video game.
They all stop when the little group enters.
Bruce leans down and whispers into her ear, "Don't worry. They're hardly ever all together like this, but we wanted you to meet everyone at the same time so Clint and I can intervene."
Jubilee smiles slightly. Mrs. Meyer clears her throat loudly, and Jubilee winces. Bruce and Clint hurriedly introduce everyone. When they reach Peter, Steve interrupts.
"Peter is a sophomore too, so he'll help you get situated at school, show you around, that sort of thing."
Peter is smiling brightly at her, and she waits for Mrs. Meyers to clarify that no, actually, Jubilee is a freshman, a freshman who can barely handle her shit as it is, because this is clearly Mrs. Meyers' department. But after several seconds of frankly painful silence, Jubilee realizes that Mrs. Meyers has no intention of fulfilling her duties as a social worker and speaks up.
"Actually, I'm a freshman."
This causes a bit of trouble, because she is already registered at the high school as a sophomore, but then Pepper says she'll make some calls and that's that. Mrs. Meyers is apparently satisfied that Clint and Bruce aren't abusive or secret meth dealers, so she asks Bruce to see her downstairs, where she'll catch a cab to the airport. She's flying to Florida rather than California, so she can visit her sister. This is ostensibly code for "go on vacation". She makes sure they have her contact information and Jubilee's file. She takes Jubilee by surprise and pulls her into a hug, during which Jubilee slips her hand into Mrs. Meyers' oversized purse and tugs her new sunglasses free. Bruce leads her to the elevator and just like that Jubilee has a family.
A/N: I have three other stories that I need to work on, but I accidentally this. Theoretically there is one more actual plot-filled chapter, but I can be persuaded to write more. (By persuaded I mean I will probably continue adding little domestic one-shots indefinitely, whether you ask me to or not. But you should ask me anyway because I am a lonely, lonely person.)